Does airport security "deception detection" work?

The men who stare at airline passengers

OVER the past four years, some 3,000 officers in America's Transportation Security Administration (TSA) have been specially trained to spot potential terrorists at airports. The programme, known as SPOT, for "Screening Passengers by Observation Technique," is intended to allow airport security officers to use tiny facial cues to identify people who are acting suspiciously. The British government is currently launching a new screening regime modelled on the Americans' SPOT. There's just one problem with all this: there's no evidence that SPOT is actually effective. The whole thing is mostly based on pseudoscience, Sharon Weinberger reports in Nature:

"Simply put, people (including professional lie-catchers with extensive experience of assessing veracity) would achieve similar hit rates if they flipped a coin," noted a 2007 report from a committee of credibility-assessment experts who reviewed research on portal screening.

"No scientific evidence exists to support the detection or inference of future behaviour, including intent," declares a 2008 report prepared by the JASON defence advisory group. And the TSA had no business deploying SPOT across the nation's airports "without first validating the scientific basis for identifying suspicious passengers in an airport environment", stated a two-year review of the programme released on 20 May by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the investigative arm of the US Congress.

Basically, Ms Weinberger suggests, they made the whole thing up. Some other scientists have been unable to replicate some of the work of Paul Ekman, the psychology professor on whose work the SPOT programme (and the television series Lie to Me) is based. Most of Ekman's peer-reviewed work was published decades ago. He says he now avoids peer-reviewed journals because they're read closely by scientists in countries that America considers to be threats.

Ekman and his collaborators maintain that people can be trained to spot liars. But he's opposed to anyone actually trying to test SPOT scientifically. That would be "totally bogus," he says, because anyone playing the part of a terrorist in a controlled study wouldn't face the same pressures or stresses as an actual terrorist. So SPOT has never really been tested.

The bottom line is that, according to the GAO, the TSA is "unsure" whether SPOT has ever led to the arrest of an actual, real-life terrorist. The agency has hired an independent contractor to evaluate the program, and the results are due next year. In the meantime, the TSA will presumably continue to spend taxpayer dollars on a programme that it's not really sure is effective.

Read Ms Weinberger's whole article for more context and a look at the next "malintent detection" technology in the pipeline. Some of her commenters think she actually went too easy on the TSA. What do you think?

Readers' comments

Once again, the government has given in to the pseudoscience lobby. This is not only true with the so called spotters, but also with those who advocate "lie detectors" that are regularly used by government agencies without a shred of legitimate scientific support.

Ms. Weinberger is correct when she points out that this nonsense is no more reliable than the flip of a coin. Unfortunately, that is common in many areas in the fields of phychology, phychiatry, criminology, and sociology.

The sad thing is they make decisions based upon this type of witchcraft and it has long term adverse consequences for people's lives.

They make it all up, and sell it to a gullible public, justifying their role in society.

duh?

Hire a bunch of Israeli's.

Considering the relative level of hostility towards the country from those hell bent on its destruction (compared to other countries) they seem to be remarkably successful in preventing acts of terrorism in the air.

Well, I have seen all episodes of "Lie to Me", I have read the Lee Child book "Nothing to Lose (so I can quote both the 11 point list on how to find a suicide bomber and know how to say "Reacher said Nothing" without blinking). So I'm completely sold on the idea of spotting liers.

However I also got Paul Ekman's "Telling Lies" in my bookshelf so I know that the usual US way of doing it with the help of so called lie detectors is a very flawed concept. I can imagine how many who got their lifes and careers destroyed by the latter.

Anyway, as I recall TSA is not supposed to catch anyone, they are there to make you feel better. You as a traveller are supposed to feel more secure about travelling, thus its very important that its actually a chore to meet TSA at the airport (with the added bonus that the joint experience bounds all passengers together), it would be a catastrophe if you did not notice that they were there after all.

Since the UK government is in urgent need of budget cuts one imagines that this project might exist to provide something that could be painlessly dropped from the budget. So not quite useless after all...

"He says he now avoids peer-reviewed journals because they're read closely by scientists in countries that America considers to be threats... maintain(s) that people can be trained to spot liars. But he's opposed to anyone actually trying to test SPOT scientifically."

!!

I don't know about spotting terrorists, but I feel it's 100% possible to spot a fraud.

Ms. Weinberger is correct in her skepticism, and I write this as a professor of organizational behaviour. There is no way to identify terrorists by observing them or by interviewing them.

What you can do, however, is identify people who are nervous. You can do this yourself, to pass the time, the next time you're waiting in an airport. But a passenger might be nervous because he fears flying, or because he has to make a big sale at his destination, or because he's simply antsy by nature. A terrorist might be cool as a cucumber, especially if the terrorist is well-trained. The end result is an essentially random process being dressed up as "science".

I think is part of Obama's job creation program. Don't fire them - it will increase unemployment. Then they might all become Medicaid psychs and blow that budget even further out of the water. By putting them in
TSA, their budget is untouchable. Paid for by your air travel taxes.

Perhaps TSA is more effective than is apparent (how could it not be?). Given the conundrum between the politically incorectness of "racial profiling" and the fact that airborne terrorists are always young men from certain well-defined ethnic/religious groups, could this program be a cover for effective profiling? Are the techniques of stress detection focused on high-risk individuals identified by their appearance? The well-regarded Isreali interviewing techniques seem to not waste time on say, Swedish grandmothers.

I think the smart crime prevention program probably includes a few unintrusive, untested and probably ineffective programs. If they are tracking the program, false positives, false negatives and correct positives, then this is one of the smarter things my tax dollars, as lent to me by foreign sovereigns, will be spent on.

Long story:
... what would happen if i am in a rush, my flight's in 30 minutes, i show my boarding pass to the passenger at the front of the security queue to explain why i am cutting it, unasked i even remove my stainless steal watch (which doesnt usually activate the beeper) but just to increase the chance i get through that much faster. On the other side after all is scanned, and still in a sweat, i repack my two laptops...put on my shoes, and their are two barely recognizeable SPOT trained plain-clothed employees, they dont like the fact that 'forgot' (in their eyes) my Tag-Heur (i AM stressed out), and after a discreet discussion between themselves, someone seems to notice (what i assume to be) their signal, and i am told i need to participate on a 'standard' extra check that they do stochastically .. standard procedure.

I am getting just more nervous, my sweating has just increased. But i am acting relaxed, telling them my flight is in 20, and boarding closes in 10, minutes, knowing that my anxiousness might provoke their recalcitrance ... thinking i can for sure then kiss my flight good-bye. Standard procedure.

I am over dramatizing it. The stressed late-commer happens often enough for the SPOT employee. No big deal. They do a short profiling, and let me go.

Lucky i am Danish and my grandmother Swedish, and have just broken my right arm skiing.

But what if i have a Saudi Passport, with an Indian or Pakistani visa stamp in my passport. And i need to reach a family wedding home (no not Riyahd, but London).

Short story:
SPOT is a crazy and fun idea ... but unfortunate if is to be taken seriously.